


Hills Like Black Elephants

by ndnickerson



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Angst, Bondage, Disguise, F/M, Kink, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-30
Updated: 2009-12-30
Packaged: 2017-10-05 12:15:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/41640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ndnickerson/pseuds/ndnickerson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Logan spends an evening trying to forget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hills Like Black Elephants

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through the end of Season 2. In this story, Keith did die in the plane crash.

His father had been dead for a month when he ducked into the Painted Veil.

Aaron had brought Logan to the club for his sixteenth birthday, or at least what his third glass of scotch had convinced him was Logan's sixteenth birthday. He was four months late, but after Aaron backhanded Logan for the second time, the blood welling on his split lip, Logan had stopped correcting his father. He'd never been able to shut up until after the first slap, the first taste of blood. Lilly had been able to make him come simply by the sharp needle of her teeth into the tender flesh of his lower lip and the firm stroke of her palm over his fly.

Logan didn't like remembering that visit to the club, if only because Lilly had wanted to hear every detail after. She'd asked which girls Aaron had liked, whose arms he had shoved Logan into before disappearing into the wood-paneled hell of a back room and the oblivion of loose flesh between some dead-eyed girl's thighs, what Logan had done, and he had made up something wickedly nasty and appropriate while he remembered that there had been sixty-seven loops in the cord of the telephone on the bar and three puckered razor-slits on the inner thigh of the whore who knelt between his knees and gave him better head than even Lilly did when she was both drunk and loudly proclaiming that she had never tasted anything better than his cum. When Logan asked her why she'd even cared, Lilly had only winked, and he'd yanked her skirt down so hard she had a bruise on her hip the next day at school.

A month later the bruise had faded and Lilly was dead on the edge of her swimming pool, and the dead in _her_ eyes hurt more than anything else his father could have done to him.

The Painted Veil didn't make any pretense about what it was. No pool tables, slot machines, video monitors; only women in black and red, stilettos and leather. But this was Neptune, so their bruises weren't quite covered by their makeup and sometimes they stumbled in their high heels, and sometimes in the right light they looked even younger than Logan himself. His father preferred girls with long blonde ponytails, the ones who wore leather bodices under white button-downs and short pleated plaid skirts slung low on their sharp hips.

Logan preferred the ones who greeted him with icy stares, but the one who caught his eye first didn't even bother looking up to return his protracted glance.

She was at the edge of the bar, away from everyone else, in black leather boots laced all the way to her knees, garters, black bustier, a curtain of long dark hair hiding her face as she stirred a pale amber cocktail in a highball glass. The knotted tips of the business end of the cat o' nine tails at her elbow swung at the edge of the pitted bar.

Logan gave up on her only with reluctance after five fruitless minutes, and wandered back toward the private rooms, the wood paneling and stained sheets. The smeared Plexiglass slits in the doors sometimes revealed a shadowed glimpse of what Veronica would have dismissed with a shrug of her blonde hair and a drawled "Tawdriness," but he shoved the memory of that away, telling himself that he didn't care, he didn't care anymore.

_So the quarterback likes wearing a ball gag._ He could only watch for a minute before the whiskey in his stomach began to churn.

"What's your poison?"

An unsteady bottle blonde leaned against the door he'd been peering through, her areola showing with the rise of her every breath, scarlet nails stroking the black lace falling over her thighs. Dark roots, orange tan, too many teeth showing with her every lazy smile.

"Not you," Logan replied, pulling the cuff of his shirt up over the heel of his hand before rubbing at the window. "Blow, doll."

He was on his second drink of the hour, which put him near comfortable and within striking distance of careless, when he saw that the brunette hadn't moved. He tossed back the rest of his drink and found the stool next to hers fortuitously empty. It was a sign, he grinned to himself, smacking his empty glass down on the bartop, earning the attention of nearly everyone else, but her.

He let his palm slap gently to her bare, pale knee, pitching his voice low. "Let me buy you a drink."

She raised her head, her face still obscured by her hair, and crooked a finger at the bartender. He came over, giving Logan and his empty glass a wary look before pouring the brunette another drink. Logan flicked his nail against his empty and was rewarded with another three fingers of scotch for his trouble. The brunette lifted her glass and took a long swallow without even so much as a glance in his direction, and he'd never been patient a day in his life.

The black ribbons of her garters stretched tight over her thigh and he slid his fingertips underneath, taking her in, eating her alive with his gaze. She wore thonged black leather, thin through the shadow between the pale curves of her ass, a tight bodice under something sheer and black that would look good on the carpet at the foot of his bed, and he was almost drunk enough to tell her so when she turned to look him in the face.

He was already half-hard, his jeans tight, but when he dragged his gaze up from her tits to meet her eyes, he gasped.

"V—"

She reached up and pressed one ruby-tipped finger to his parted lips. "No names here, sugar."

He hadn't seen her since that night when she hadn't been able to stop crying and he had comforted the only way he'd known how, and he'd woken at three o'clock in the morning with the hangover pressing behind his eyes, only to find her gone. After that, her apartment was deserted and some huge black man behind the receptionist's desk at Mars Investigations had just kept telling him that she wasn't available, wasn't available, she would return his call at her earliest opportunity, but he wasn't surprised when she never did.

_Miss Mars. Miss Mars can't see you now._

"I lost mine too, you know," he mumbled, not looking at her. She pushed the flat of her thumbnail deep into his cheek and dragged it so roughly that he could feel the familiar sting of the welt as it swelled in response.

"No," she drawled. "You lost him a long time ago."

"Why'd you shut me out?" He didn't look at her eyes, afraid of what he'd find there, and his skin was numb.

"I needed some time. I have a business to run now."

He snickered, still feeling the black silk ribbons of her garters against his fingertips. "The oldest profession in the world?"

He didn't even know the cat was in her hand until he felt the flails against his bare upper arm. He'd taken to wearing short sleeves again, for the first time in a long time, now that the bruises and scars had begun to fade, but he could almost get used to this.

"Confirming that guys can't keep their dicks in their pants?"

"Never let it be said that I wasn't a... guy." He produced a roll of bills, his gold money clip clattering to the bar as he stripped off a single hundred-dollar bill. She crooked her finger up, up, with every additional bill he let fall to the bar. "That?" She rolled her eyes, her voice dripping with scorn. "You'll be lucky if that buys you a hand job in the back alley."

"Inflation really is a bitch, huh." He flipped open his wallet, not missing the way the bartender's gaze lingered on the pile of green in front of him, and held his gold card aloft, scissored between his index and middle fingers. "So, what, do I just swipe this through that slit between your thighs?"

She propped her chin on her hand. "I dare you to try," she said slowly, her eyes narrowed.

Logan caught the bartender's eye. "Another drink and I'll take you up on that."

She shook her head. "Go home."

"Or you'll set that big black tank of a secretary on me?"

"Would you enjoy that?"

"Would you?"

This time he was the first to break their gaze. "At least I don't have to ask him if it's in yet," she said, slowly, deliberately.

Logan hid his expression with another gulp from his glass. "I've never seen you like this," he mumbled. "I called you..."

With a low disgusted noise she pushed herself off her stool, leaving her drinks untouched on the bar. "Take your hundreds and your gold card and your hard-on and go home, Logan."

"With that girl? That one over there?" He swiveled his head to keep his gaze on her face. "The one with the skull tattooed on the small of her back, is it okay for me to go chat _her_ up? Think I can afford _her_?" He grabbed one of her abandoned drinks and took a long gulp before realizing only the carbonation burned, and nearly spat it all over the bar.

"Yeah. Get out of here."

He grabbed her wrist before she could slide past him, and she stood shifting her weight, glaring at him in visible contempt, the knotted leather swinging in wordless promise from her fist.

"Meet me somewhere."

"Why should I?" She nodded at the pile of money at his elbow. "When that wasn't even enough."

"Call me sentimental, but I think you owe me just a little for ditching me so thoroughly."

She looked away from him and closed her eyes for a moment, and in the dim light and the alcoholic blur of his vision her eyes were just dark empty sockets, dead and cold as Lilly. He shivered and she opened her eyes, blue on black and a million miles away.

"Anywhere but the Grand," she whispered.

\--

She left the lights on and the hotel room wasn't wood paneled, but it was almost as bad as those closet nightmares in the back of the bar. He was naked and she hadn't even bothered to shrug off the sheer black excuse for a robe.

"There will be rules."

The last time he'd seen her, her eyes had been nearly swollen shut with tears, blonde hair stuck to her cheeks, gasping every single breath, so tight that she fucking writhed against him when he came. The girl standing at the foot of the bed looked like she had never cried in her life, like his skin would freeze to hers if she so much as touched him, and she would suck him dry.

"Oh."

The knotted leather wrapped around his foot, stinging the sole. "You only talk when I _say_ you can talk," she said fiercely. "And I did not _say_ you could talk."

He sat up and smirked, part of him waiting for her to suddenly grin and bite her lip like the girl he had once known, part of him hoping she wouldn't.

"We won't need this," she said, going over to the bedside table, pulling the phone cord out of the base. She nodded toward the headboard. "Put your hands through."

He leaned back and obeyed her, grinning as she climbed over him to straddle his chest, her knees on either side of his ribs, her dark hair brushing his temple. She wove the cord around his wrists deftly. "You can say if it's too tight."

He licked his lips. "And then you'll just make it tighter."

She kept one hand holding the cord taut around his wrists while she reached back with the other, keeping her gaze steady on his, and smacked the angle of his hip so hard it stung and his already erect cock bobbed with his next heartbeat.

"Maybe."

"We gonna have a safe word?"

She pulled the cord tighter and he winced. "You don't trust me?"

"I've seen you with a taser too many times." He expected the tightening this time, and wasn't disappointed.

She inched back over him, inner thighs brushing against his sides, down toward his hips. "It doesn't matter," she murmured, and then the flail was against his skin, the leather just brushing his shoulder. He swallowed. "Try to move your hands."

He wiggled his fingers, but his wrists stayed motionless. "What happens when I talk?"

She flicked the cat and he felt the knotted leather stroke his abs. "You get punished."

"What's my reward for being quiet?" He arched up to meet the next slap.

Eyes on his, she reached between her legs. He heard a snap before the leather was loose between her thighs and he could just see the pale smooth edge of her flesh.

"Fuck... fuck, you shaved."

She flicked the flail again, just the slightest bit harder, and he arched again as she licked her lips. "Earn your keep," she demanded, low, throatily, and then her knees were bent and pressing into the pillow on either side of his head.

He could still remember her as the little blonde girl in a soccer uniform, long socks and her arm linked through Lilly's. He saw a dark emptiness in her eyes and knew that she'd cream herself at the press of a lit cigarette against her skin, as he'd learned to do a long time ago, as he scraped his teeth against her clit.

He'd learned his own pain a long time ago, learned to tame it. But he'd left her drowning in hers, and from the look in her eyes he could see that she had never found her way out.

He'd almost had his tongue pierced once and now he wished he'd gone through with it, with something wicked and sharp, something that would bring even the softest gasp to her lips, but she stayed quiet. The press of her knees against the headboard made it squeal in protest, her calves against his shoulders, her toes digging into his sides, the leather sounding against his skin with every thrust of his tongue.

She suddenly pushed herself back, leaving the taste of her in his mouth, and he winced when she smacked the flail against his hip. "Stop."

"Why, you come?" he challenged.

The sting of the flails against his skin was almost perfunctory, and her eyes wouldn't meet his. "You need to be punished, Mr. Echolls."

He nodded toward the pile of his discarded clothes. "There's a condom in my wallet for whenever you want to start the punishing."

She slapped him, forcing him back until the crown of his head brushed the bars in the headboard. Leaning down, grinning wickedly, her breath hot against his throat, she purred, "That's not punishment, Logan, that's pleasure, and you don't deserve it."

Her teeth pressing into his neck, he sucked in a breath, trembling when she ran the sharp thin tip of her thumbnail up the length of his cock. "What do I deserve?" He tilted his head back as she bit into the joint of his shoulder and neck, the knotted leather sliding over his skin.

Her face moved close to his, her breath against his mouth, and he pushed it up against hers, pushing his tongue and the taste of her cunt into her mouth. She pulled away and he closed his eyes, waiting for the sting of the leather. The cat snapped against his skin and she sucked his lower lip into her mouth, sank her teeth into his flesh. When he tasted blood his hips rocked up towards her, but met nothing.

"Veronica..."

Panting, she struck him again, the sound reverberating, before she pushed herself up on her knees, her garters stretched tight. When he closed his eyes for a second he remembered the rage on that horrible June night and her fist swinging up to meet his ribs, over and over, until she was spent and exhausted and couldn't scream anymore. She had been incoherent with grief and he had been numb, because even a set of papers proving he was emancipated from Aaron Echolls couldn't erase the white circles that would never fully heal, or the knowledge that his father had done his best to destroy everything his son had ever loved. Too much, it was all too much, his mother spreadeagled and gliding to the water, her mother taking all hope Veronica had ever held for her future and fleeing with it, in the night, to find another bottle of vodka, another reason to leave her daughter behind.

They were alone. He always had been, and she never had.

"I did not _say_."

He opened his eyes and stared at the inverted V of her thighs, instead of her face. He pushed himself up, scooting his heels across the mattress, before slamming his knees into the small of her back, attempting to push her hips to the right angle. She struck him again, his skin rent apart by the blow.

"Do it," he panted. "Fuck me."

She shook her head. "You need to remember who's in charge here."

"Did you think I could forget?" he breathed, bending his knee before shoving it up between her thighs. She jerked away, her cunt wet against his skin.

Then she inched forward until she was straddling his abs, but when he bent his knees the bedsprings creaked. Without looking, she reached behind her to smack the cat against his knees, and he hissed. "Don't do that again," she said, and he nodded, the wicked light in her eyes almost worse than the dead frozen blue they had been the last time he'd seen her.

He stared intently, watching as she worked the erect handle of the whip between her parted thighs, leaning forward, breathing into his ear. She gasped once, twice, then groaned, and he could feel the rock of her hips while she strained against the handle.

"I'd rather fuck this than you," she breathed, tracing her tongue up against his ear.

He turned his face and bit into her lower lip as she moaned, her undulation rising until it was almost frantic, and he found himself wrestling suddenly against the cord, trying to break free. It only pulled tighter.

"I would slap you but I'm about... to..." she moaned, and he pushed one knee up against her ass, her breast nearly rising free of the bustier. She laughed and he hated the sound.

"Was it good for you?"

He groaned. "All I need is one free hand... God, I hate you so much right now."

She grinned. "Maybe I can help you, in a second."

"Let me guess, Duncan was so bad in bed that you got used to fucking inanimate objects?"

Her hand darted to just under his chin and she shoved his jaw up, the sharp angle of it forcing his head against the headboard. The jolt made him bite his tongue, his mouth filling with the coppery taste of blood. He sucked in a breath to cry out in rage and pain, but cut himself off when she pushed herself backward swiftly, perched over him.

She lowered her hips over his and ground down against his shaft.

Fuck, she was wet. Her nails dug into his hips as she rode him, and his eyes rolled back. He groaned and they were finally seamless, his cock was impossibly hard inside her, so deep he could feel her heart beating, and he was at her core. In a breath, she had pulled away just to rock down against him even harder.

"Come," he panted, her nails scratching across his hips, digging into his flesh. He almost came then, the salt taste of her still against his mouth, the wet tight clench of her around him. "Veronica..."

Her hips were frantic, slamming against his, and he heard her gasp, just once, so soft he could have imagined it, before she came. She slowed and he pushed himself up on his heels, thrusting himself ruthlessly between her legs, her hand resounding with one final smack against his skin.

He closed his eyes, tilting his head back. Blood on his tongue, blood against his thighs, his heart pounding, and he shook. For a second too long, after he was spent and she was still tight against him, they were still joined, and he was just opening his eyes when she swung away from him. He made a soft disappointed sound and she snapped the leather back between her legs, then started glancing around the room.

"What?"

"Gonna get back," she said, distracted. "I was working. And I have this feeling I'm gonna need..."

Logan struggled to raise his head. "Get back?"

She yanked one of the pillows out from under his head and stripped off the case, then ripped off a swath of the cloth before she climbed back onto the bed. "Smile pretty for me," she cooed before wrapping it over his mouth and tying it behind. He whipped his head around but she pulled the cloth tight, until the gag was wet and he could only gurgle.

She stopped at the door. "Don't try to follow me," she said quietly.

Then she was gone, and he could only stare at the dead telephone, his fingertips going numb.

\--

He went to the Painted Veil every night for the next week, but he never saw her there again. The big black tank of a secretary gave him a wink the next time he came by, but it ended in the same old runaround. He looked for her car, he looked for her on the dog beach. He even tracked down Wallace, but when Logan asked about Veronica, Wallace just shook his head, not meeting Logan's eyes.

He was in Los Angeles when she was four months gone, and every girl looked like her, and no girl looked like her. The slow-eyed girls in the all-night diners, the glittering girls who laughed at everything he said and heard none of it, the ones who returned his gazes with icy stares.

He only came when he bled, when he felt the press of incisors against his neck, and he stopped talking about her when he was drunk. He didn't stop thinking her name, it still rose to his lips, and when he swallowed it, the bitter taste was drowned in the next drink, always the next drink.

One night all he could hear was the sound of her name, and it only stopped when he went up to the roof of his hotel, pressed his lit cigarette against the tender flesh inside his elbow and bent his arm. She was a nun in a convent, the bartender at the club he'd visited three weeks ago, the whore he'd hired to keep him company later. She was everywhere and nowhere, and he couldn't stop looking.

"Don't try to follow me," he whispered, and he burned as the wind on the roof snatched the words away.


End file.
